Category Archives: Gwen

Re-entry

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By the end of our vacation, we were all a little ready to get back “home”.  For the kids this was apparently Shanghai.  They started moaning and groaning about missing the dog, their friends, and their bikes with a few weeks left in the United States.  I was less sure about heading back to China.  The summer was more stressful than I had anticipated, and when I got that feeling that I sometimes get on vacation—the one where I am missing my own bed–I realized that it wasn’t exactly the same.  I wasn’t really missing Shanghai. I am still not in love with China, and I was dreading the re-entry.

I started the trip home with the kids just hoping to make it back to Shanghai without killing any of them.  The long break had left us all a little tired of each other and the bickering was difficult to manage.  We were rushed at the airport in Baltimore, but I had been holding out a sliver of hope that we might be upgraded to business class for the 14-hour leg of the journey.  The ticketing agent said that would be unlikely, but that I should wait until we got to the gate in Newark to ask there.  Then she shooed us away and we hustled through security.

Waiting for the flight to leave Newark felt a lot like waiting to leave Shanghai.  The gate was full of Chinese people.  An older Chinese woman took an interest in Henry and said something to him in Mandarin as we sat down.  Her hands embarrassedly fluttered up to cover her mouth when she remembered where we were and that he most likely wouldn’t understand her.  But Henry did understand her.  He was shy, but Lucas and Ava made up for that.  Once everyone knew the kids spoke a little Mandarin, it was just like being back in China.  Our business was everyone’s business.  The woman disapproved of Henry’s video games, and covered his iPad screen with her hands.  She got out snacks and offered pumpkin seeds to the kids.  Henry happily accepted a handful and munched on them as we waited.  I was beginning to remember some of the things about Shanghai that were ok.  Having a trio of cute blonde ambassadors certainly didn’t hurt.  We got upgrades and we all did a little dance.  We even saw some neighbors from our compound and the kids excitedly shared tales of their summer adventures.  Maybe going back to Shanghai was going to be fine after all.

The flight was reasonable.  The upgrades made it easy for the kids to sleep.  There were ice cream sundaes!  Lucas watched a million movies!  The flight attendants were helpful!  What was usually the most difficult part of the journey was–dare I say it? —almost easy.  It looked like we were going to have a trouble free time getting back to Shanghai.  Oh, China.  Why was I worried?

We were about two hours away from the Shanghai airport when the pilot made an announcement.  There was a typhoon in Shanghai and we were being diverted to Beijing.  A typhoon?!  Well played, China.  Well played.  The details were sketchy, but they would let us know more once we landed.  The airline would put us up in a hotel and they would most likely fly us to Shanghai in the early morning.

The next few hours included plenty of general craziness, multiple shuttle and bus rides, and confusion.  I remembered some of the things I don’t like about China, like all the pushing and shoving it takes to get on those buses and shuttles and the refusal to accept the concept of personal space.   The Chinese might love my kids, but they think nothing of separating them from me in a crowd.  We were only allowed to bring our carry on luggage with us.  The checked things stayed on the plane. Each kid had a rolling suitcase and I was lucky to get us all on and off the million escalators in one piece with the wall of bodies both in front of and behind us.  My Chinese cell phone had died during the summer and was useless without the charger so I had packed it thinking I wouldn’t need it. I had put it in one of the checked bags that would now be spending the night at the airport.  My American cell phone clicked into expensive mode as I tried to get in touch with Mark to explain the details.

The airline was nice enough to provide dinner, but because we had had nothing since the midflight snack we all got hungry well before the buffet would open at 6pm.  I was also skeptical that everyone from the entire flight could be reasonably fed in the one hour and thirty minutes the hotel restaurant had blocked out for us.  If the earlier mad rush of people crushing each other to secure a coveted seat on one of the buses was any indication, dinner would be tricky to navigate without injury.  I didn’t want to add an emergency room visit to our brief time in Beijing so I opted to take the kids down early and paid the equivalent of $100 for 4 bowls of minestrone soup, 1 small grilled cheese sandwich, 1 club sandwich, and 4 drinks.  It was not delicious.  We were all in bed by 6:30.

We ended up in a reasonable hotel, but in two rooms that were too far apart for my liking.  I sternly told the boys that they were not to leave their room until I came to get them in the morning.  As anyone could have predicted, this resulted in Henry yelling in the hallway a little after midnight having gone out to “walk around”.  He had, of course, locked himself out of his room.  Never in my life have I put on a pair of pants so quickly.  I was still buttoning as I burst into the hall hoping to keep Henry from boarding some random elevator.  This set us up nicely for the 1am wake up call and the 2am bus ride (AGAIN!) back to the airport.  They had us in the air by 5am.

But the fun wasn’t over yet.  We landed, but had no gate.  Customs didn’t want to let us off the plane, convinced the time we had spent navigating things in Beijing was not satisfactory.  Admittedly, our checked luggage hadn’t gone through customs, but at this point no one wanted to deal with the headache of processing us all again.  We sat down and stood back up no less than five times.  People milled about.  A Chinese woman made herself at home on my armrest rather than move the 8 steps back to her own seat.  Two hours later we were finally let off the plane and into the terminal where we all continued to move as if we were a swarm of bees.  They changed the baggage claim carousel twice and each time everyone from the flight moved like a giant amoeba, stepping on toes and pressing up against each other.   Then we all jammed ourselves around the conveyor belt and slung our bags into fellow passengers’ legs and torsos.   Finally, after a sweaty taxi ride, we were back at Team Erickson’s Shanghai outpost.  And I was actually just a little bit happy to be home.

Home Again

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We made it back to Baltimore after an uneventful flight.  When we moved to Shanghai, we flew business class—something we should never have let the children experience.  When they found out the trip back for summer vacation would be in economy, the reaction was universal.  “Economy?!” they all exclaimed.  “How can we survive in economy?!”  I must admit, I was feeling the same way.  I wasn’t looking forward to sitting straight up for thirteen hours and fighting to use the shared bathroom.  The new baggage restrictions were an unpleasant surprise—only one bag each for an international flight!—and having to pay for the wine I would need to survive flying with all three children by myself added insult to injury.  Luckily the kids are all still small enough to curl up in the seats so they arrived in Newark with several hours of sleep under their belts.  I wasn’t quite so lucky, but we made our connection and got to Grandmom’s house without much drama.

I headed straight to Target as soon as I could get myself organized.  I nearly had a panic attack as I filled my cart to overflowing.  I had a long list of things that were all “Made in China” but actually unavailable for purchase in China.  This is a most perplexing thing for me about living in Shanghai.  We joked about not taking anything from the US to China that would just be returning to the country of its birth, but it is nearly impossible to find all those cheap but reasonably well made things that are made in Chinese factories for sale in China.  There are poorly made things at all the markets and there are high end things in all the shopping malls, but that middle ground that is so crucial for elementary kids’ clothing, for example, is illusive.  I had to force myself to stop with only one cart when I realized I was now just throwing random items I “might need” on top of the crucial items from my carefully planned list.

I had the same reaction in Whole Foods.  I wanted to eat everything and could no longer muster up the energy to stop myself from just emptying entire shelves with my arm.  I also found myself marveling at how cheap and reasonable all the food was—at Whole Foods! You know you have been shopping in the wrong places when a trip to Whole Foods seems like a bargain.  Wait until I venture into Sam’s Club in a few weeks.  I am sure they will have me forcibly removed from the store.

We spent our two weeks in Baltimore visiting friends and dealing with our house.  The sale fell through a few days after our arrival and that took up plenty of the time I would have spent standing in front of my mother-in-law’s refrigerator and marveling at all the space inside it.  I was also moved almost to tears by the efficiency of her washer and dryer and spent some time enjoying the fresh scent of clean clothes that had been allowed to dry completely.  Oh, the things that I once took for granted.  How I have missed you.

 

Explorations: Chinese Printed Blue Nankeen Exhibition Hall

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My friend Shanghai Sue is lucky enough to have a driver.  Getting around in Shanghai isn’t too difficult by taxi or subway, but having the chance to tag along with her when she has the driver makes all that work just to get from place to place seem like such effort.   I miss being able to hop in my car and run a few errands without having each stop become a major production.  Using the driver is more complicated than driving yourself—you need to plan ahead and make arrangements that include someone else being part of everything—but I don’t think I would want to try driving in Shanghai.  For now I am content to let Sue be in charge of transportation every now and then.

Today’s stop—the former French Concession (you have to say former or face the wrath of the Chinese government) and the Chinese Printed Blue Nankeen Exhibition Hall.

Sue has relatives that are into fabric and she wanted to check out the Chinese style indigo batik.  There is allegedly a museum with all the information you would need about the process of making the cloth and the history of nankeen in China, but we never managed to get to any museum.  Maybe because the lane we had to walk down to find the place looked like this.

We pushed past all the laundry and wandered down the alley.  Sue’s driver had a difficult time finding the lane we needed so there was always that sliver of possibility that we were completely in the wrong place.  There had been a sign that seemed to say we were headed in the right direction, but when the alley got extremely narrow and the only indication that we should keep going was a handwritten sign all in characters, well, I was tempted to give up.

Sue:  “How is your reading these days?”

Me:  “Not great.  Poor.”

Sue:  “Hmm.”

At one point Sue tried a random door hoping we weren’t about to burst in on someone’s afternoon bath.  Luckily, the door was locked and we avoided arrest for breaking and entering.

Suddenly we were in someone’s back yard with the most beautiful laundry you have ever seen hanging on the line.  After some confusion with where exactly the entrance might be, we were in!  We had found it! 

They have beautiful things, but I resisted making any purchases right before we leave for vacation.  Maybe next time…

Changle Lu 637, House 24, Shanghai

In Praise of … Cautiousness?

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Last week Ava’s teacher sent me an email inviting me to their class assembly.  Ava would be receiving an award so I told her I would be there.  It is a little bittersweet to get an award at the last assembly of the school year before you ride off into the sunset and change schools, but we would take it!  Ava had told me that in class they had voted for their classmates in a variety of different categories for awards to be given out the last week of school.  I didn’t ask too much follow up so I just assumed that was what I was going to be seeing when I went to the assembly.

Dear China,

Please remind me never to assume anything while we are living here.  Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Gwen

This assembly had nothing to do with the awards Ava had been discussing.  This assembly was one of the school’s character assemblies.  Yes, character, and not like cartoon.  Throughout the school year, the classes make presentations about specific attributes that are part of their character education program.  I am all for building character, and when I heard about this part of the school curriculum I wasn’t too alarmed.  The school has a religious element, not too strong, but there none the less.  It seemed at first to be just the melding of Western and Asian culture that would help the kids to better understand China and make sense of their experiences here.  It leans heavily toward Christianity, but my kids have had exposure to other religions.  Done well a little character education might be nice, right?

Ava showed me her “character cards” during our parent conference a month or so ago and I asked her some questions about them.  She was vague, maybe because she wasn’t entirely clear on things.  Some of the assemblies and discussions were from the beginning of the year and she had only participated in a few.  These character cards had cartoon animals on them –I am guessing the animal is supposed to represent that character trait somehow—and then a small description.  Some of them were confusing, and there were quite a few of them that I was a bit skeptical about.  There are things like “discernment” and “hospitality”.  The kinds of things that are difficult to define and the explanations didn’t always fit my interpretation.

Last week’s assembly was about “cautiousness” and I was treated to a performance all about following the rules and being obedient.  Some of it was easy to agree with.  I am all for internet safety and leaving the scene when you think you might be in danger, but there were parts that made me uncomfortable.  There was so much of the performance that was about the rules and how following them made everyone safer.  Now, I am not against rules or following the rules.  But I like my rules with a healthy dose of explanation.  I don’t think that kids should blindly accept the rules just because an adult tells them to and I don’t think adults should be offended when kids ask them to explain where a rule comes from or why we all should follow it.  I am not excited to hear people say that we have a rule “just because”.  Sadly, much of this assembly was about how grown ups know more than kids and, for that reason, kids should do what grown ups say.  An administrator got up at the end to thank the children for their work in putting on the performance.  He reiterated how the rules were in place to keep kids safe and that grown ups know more than kids.  Rules help us to have more fun, not less!  All hail, cautiousness!

Next came the awards and I began to get a sinking feeling that Ava was about to get an award celebrating her cautiousness.  Each class gave two awards and one of her teachers stood up to sing the praises of the first lucky student.  He always raises his hand.  He always asks permission.  He always does things at the right time.  He was all smiles as he came up to receive his award.  The Chinese-speaking teacher got up and presented the second award.  I have no idea what was actually said because the combination of Mandarin and the growing dread of Ava being recognized for cautiousness was just too overwhelming.  When her name was called, Ava looked genuinely surprised.  Her face lit up and she rushed forward to get the coveted piece of paper.  She beamed for the rest of the assembly as the other classes handed out their awards.  When she made eye contact with me her smile intensified and she bounced a bit, her excitement unable to compete with her cautiousness, apparently.

When it was finished she ran over to me gushing about the award.  She had never been given an award before and she was elated to have been recognized.  Thrilled.  I shared some of her enthusiasm, but it was tinged with a bit of regret.  I know how hard these last few months have been for her and how difficult it has been to adapt to this new school.  She has trouble sitting still and tends to be the kid who bounces around full of crazy ideas.  Here she has been told that she needs to be quiet and she needs to raise her hand.  She needs to follow directions and she has had to wear a uniform to conform even more.  The first few weeks of this were excruciating.  She was trying so hard and it was so exhausting.  It got better, but now here we are getting rewarded for our cautiousness.  I found myself hoping that they had given her the award only because she hadn’t gotten one before and they didn’t want to leave her out.  I am hoping that they were just being nice, because the alternative is that Ava has squished herself so tiny in the last few months that her teachers actually see her as exemplifying cautiousness.  I don’t want her to be cautious.  I want her to be fearless.

Mark met me on his way to the metro station and I told him about the award and the assembly.  He laughed because he had just spent the last few days interviewing Chinese job applicants and had noticed that they were awfully, um, cautious.  This was starting to look like some sort of Chinese thing, this cautiousness!  He had to snap a few photos of the award to show his colleagues.

Later when I bemoaned the award and my mixed feelings, my friend took up the cause of cautiousness.  “Why couldn’t she have been recognized for “Enthusiasm” or Hospitality?” I had wailed.  “Something I could get behind.”

“You could get behind “Hospitality”? she had asked.

“Yes, maybe.  If it was done right.  I mean, I’m from the South.”

But Ava didn’t get an award for hospitality.  She got one for her cautiousness.  A trait that I am not entirely sure I can get behind.  The more we talked about it, the clearer it became—Mark and I don’t always value cautiousness.  We moved to China, leaving all our family and friends.  We took the kids out of wonderful schools and put our house on the market.  We decided to put our faith in something that has a pretty high failure rate.  That isn’t cautiousness.  That is risk– calculated risk.  We take chances.  We try to think things through, but occasionally we decide that even  though it isn’t 100% safe we are going to jump anyway.  How can we tell our kids to be cautious if it means shying away from a few calculated risks?  I want to raise kids that see the merit in weighing their options and sometimes taking a risk.  I want them to do the unexpected every now and then.  I understand that sometimes it pays to be cautious, but I also know that sometimes it is just the fear talking.  It would have been so much easier to stay home and let things stay the same, but then the kids wouldn’t be learning Mandarin or living in Shanghai.  Those experiences are worth a little risk.

Forgotten School Photos

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In the crazy rush of the new schools, I had completely forgotten that the kids had school photos taken.  As we count the days until our first semester of school in China officially ends (single digits!), here is a look back at those photos for your viewing pleasure.

Henry’s is the most interesting.  I can’t stop looking at this.  He is a little mad scientist here.  A deep thinker.

Ava doesn’t look at all like herself.  The uniforms make them look so unfamiliar.  I am wondering if she and Henry were told not to smile.  They both look so reserved.

And, here’s Lucas, predictably almost laughing.  He had a “fancy” shirt to change into, but he didn’t have time.  Or he forgot.  Or he decided to just leave that red shirt on to look like he is wearing the Yew Chung uniform like his siblings.  He also looks vaguely familiar, but not like his normal, every day self.  These weren’t taken that long ago, but they have changed so much even in just a few months.  We are almost ready to head back to the States for our summer visit.  We survived!

The Complainer

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Have I mentioned that I am a complainer?  Maybe you have noticed my occasional need to vent?  Yes? I am sure that it has become apparent that I cannot let the opportunity to whine pass me by.  I am not naturally a glass half full kind of person.  You can guess what this means for people who are lucky enough to be around me when I hit a little pothole in my China experience.  Fun, fun, fun!

I have been in a dip for a week or so and this, unfortunately, coincided with my parents visiting for a few days from the United States.  They had been touring around China for a week and a half and had only a few days in Shanghai. Initially, I had been confused about their trip to China.  When my mother called to tell me they were planning to visit, it seemed that they were only going to be in the country for three or four days—barely long enough to recover from the plane ride and begin to adjust to the time difference. They wanted to see the kids’ schools and our neighborhood and spend some quality time with the grandkids.  This seemed like an unusual to do list for my mother.  She is known to sightsee from dawn until well after the sun has set and I couldn’t believe that she would spend her time in Shanghai sitting around our house.  Things became more clear when their departure date got closer.  My mother started talking about their China trip long before they were to arrive.  Weren’t they coming on the 26th?  Why was she packing and talking about their flight details?  It turned out that my parents weren’t merely coming for a Shanghai visit.  They were booked on a China tour complete with river cruise.  They were scheduled to see the Great Wall and the terracotta warriors.  They had events planned for every day and every evening.  By the time they arrived in Shanghai, they would have seen more of China than we had seen in our five months living here.  No wonder they were content to fill the last few days with cafeteria lunches and classroom visits.

Since my parents were only staying for a few days, we decided they would stay with us rather than in a hotel.  This would give them the opportunity to spend more time with the kids.  Apparently, it also gave me more time to vent, whine, and complain.  My mother tried very hard to look at the positive but I was in no mood for that.  Our conversations went something like this:

Mom: I like the roof deck.

Me:  I hate it.

Mom: This kitchen is nice.

Me: I hate it.

Mom: The neighborhood is pretty.

Me: I hate it.

I am sure this got old, but still my parents tried to enjoy the experience.  I worked hard to keep a constant frown on my face.  When I could also furrow my brow and turn up my nose I worked that in as well.

Soon after they arrived, my dad got a terrible cold with a fever and the chills.  He spent the remainder of the trip in bed trying to recover.  Mom and I went to the Pearl Market to bargain for some souvenirs.  Thrown in there was a visit to the pediatrician for Ava, a major work snafu for Mark, and more of me grinding my teeth.  Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful time?  Ok, the market part was fun, but the rest of those things were less than enjoyable.  Mom got to visit my local Carrefour and take a few photos of the turtles and eels ready to be taken home for dinner, but we stayed close to home for the rest of their Shanghai time.

And I complained and complained and complained about everything.  I am fairly certain that my parents left thinking that the kids were fine but I had some real adjustment problems.  Any of the ease I had been feeling about living in Shanghai was gone when my parents were here.  I wanted to be a good hostess and to show them the great things about our new life here but, honestly, I couldn’t remember what any of those things were.   All I could remember was how frustrating every little thing was, how much time I spent on things that at home took no time at all, and how no one would ever really understand any of this.  Even when things went well, I still acted like it was the end of the world.  Who wants to visit the Ericksons in Shanghai now?  You’ve all got an open invitation to visit The Complainer!

 

The Help

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Ok, here comes the post where you all get very tired of hearing about how “horrible” it can be to live in China.  This is the post where you all throw your hands in the air and tell me to shut up about how difficult things are because this is where I start to tell you all about the ayi.  What is an ayi, you ask?  Well, be prepared to be astounded, because in Shanghai almost every expat has one and I am embarrassed that this includes me. One thing that I was hoping to love was the presence of lots of household help.  I haven’t written before about how much support people can have here for relatively little money, but it is not uncommon for families to have people to drive them around, watch their children, and clean their houses.  We don’t have a driver.  We don’t have a nanny.  But I do have an ayi. It pains me to say it, but I have a maid.  Three days a week, for six hours a day.  And I hate it.

One of the supposed perks of living in China is the availability of cheap domestic help and an ayi is basically a household helper.   It is assumed that as an expat family we would have one to help with the chores and children.  When I was touring schools one of the admissions people had even casually mentioned that my plan to wait to start working until the kids were settled was a good one because it would allow me to get my ayi “all trained” in the way I like things done before I left her in charge of the house.  This made me uncomfortable.  After all, if I have someone doing the house stuff, then what would I do all day?  Mark suggested that I get together with my friends to complain about how much I hate Shanghai.  That is what the other ladies around town do, apparently.  Very funny.  Some families have the ayi cook and clean and run all of the errands.   Some ayis do the shopping and pay the bills and pick the kids up from school.  If I was working this would be a dream, provided you find someone who works well with your family.  Some people have the ayi live with them 6 days a week and the larger expat houses have a small room off the kitchen for the ayi to sleep in.  Our house doesn’t have this, but really, we don’t need to have someone here at night.  Frankly, having someone here during the day is sometimes too much for me.

Our first ayi came 5 days a week from 8:30am to 2pm.  That was more than I had planned on, but that is how things worked out.  We were lucky in that the parent liaison at Henry and Ava’s school gave us the ayi’s number on our first day in Shanghai.  Helen had worked for another family and once they left China she needed to find another job.  We interviewed her and thought it might work so she started coming to our house the next week.  Helen speaks English–a big plus for me.  This is unusual, and it made her more expensive.  Of course, when I say expensive, it is all relative.  My rent here is expensive by any standards, but the ayi’s salary is really far from expensive.  I paid Helen 25rmb an hour.  That feels like robbery to me, but some people pay their ayi 15rmb per hour.  Basically, she was paid $4 an hour.  I will give you a second to recover from that.  Take your time.

I got used to having the ayi to help me with things when my lack of Chinese kept me from understanding something.  She could call people on the phone for me and babysit the kids.  She was able to help Ava with her Mandarin homework and to read labels to me to make sure I bought the right things. She started coming on Sundays so that Mark and I could go out without the kids.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was working.   Of course, this all came to an end when she took another job.  She opted to take a full time live-in position and recommended a friend of hers to take over.  A friend who speaks absolutely no English!  I said we’d try it and cut back to three days a week.  From the first day, we have had difficulty, um, communicating.  We pantomime and try to work things out, but often I will think we have established something only to find out she had no understanding of what I wanted.  It is frustrating.

The laundry is always a bone of contention. I have some pretty specific ideas about how laundry should be done, and these are impossible to convey without a common language.  Add to this the teeny tiny washer and dryer which happen to be located in the already cramped kitchen and you have a recipe for laundry disaster.  Things stay wet too long and stains don’t come out.  The ayi also puts the laundry away, but since we have mountains and mountains of children’s clothing here at all times she scrambles to finish all of it and then has to decide where she thinks things might belong.  I know this is supposed to be helpful.  I am sure that this is supposed to lessen stress for me and free up more time for other things, but it really only adds to the confusion in the house. I really don’t need someone to be here so much.  I hate having an extra person in the house and I hate feeling like I am being lazy as someone else scurries around frantically cleaning.  It has been a long time since I have had anyone to clean my house, and as much as I hate cleaning toilets, it is because I hate to have someone in my business.  I like knowing where everything is in my house, and please don’t tell anyone, but I like doing laundry.  I like organizing things.  It turns out I don’t like having it done for me.

I know how this sounds.  I should be appreciative of the extra help.  I should be loving all this cheap labor.  But I’m not.  I have heard horror stories about how other people treat their ayis.  There are “power struggles,” issues with childcare, and the obvious thievery that comes with paying someone so little and then putting them in charge of your house, sometimes even giving them a key.  Right now this isn’t helpful—it is more stressful.  The ayi is nice.  She is reliable.  She does a pretty good job cleaning.  But I don’t really need an ayi.

Not Really A Bargain

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When we used to travel before kids, I loved going to the markets and bargaining for souvenirs.  It was fun to be able to spar with someone over the price of an item, especially if I walked away thinking I was getting a good deal.  Most of the places we were visiting had a very favorable exchange rate when we were running around with US dollars so, let’s be honest here, even if someone was charging me way above market value for something I was still spending very little money.  It wasn’t about my budget anyway; it was about the experience.

Mark was the worst at bargaining.  He didn’t like to haggle with people and he didn’t like to feel as if he was taking advantage.  When someone offered him a handmade item or some local treasure, he couldn’t stand to argue about the worth of the thing.  This used to infuriate me because he would make it that much more difficult for me to convince people to sell me things for cheap.  Traveling in Vietnam, he made friends with some of the local girls who sold all sorts of trinkets.  Once he knew their names there was no way he could bargain with them anymore.  Since I was laid up with a horrible case of food poisoning, he spent an entire afternoon paying full price for everything.  When I recovered enough to be back at the market for our last shopping trip before heading home, there was not a soul who would give me a deal on anything.  “Your husband bought these same things yesterday,” they all told me, “and he paid full price.”  Curse you, Mark!

Here in China things have changed dramatically.  Now that we have been here a little while I have come to dislike bargaining.  It really does lose something when you need to haggle over everything.  I was expecting it in the markets, but I have since learned that in China everything is negotiable.  When we were looking for housing the real estate agent told us that he would negotiate the price and any extra things we wanted.  You ask for the moon and then you settle for a little less.  The same goes for all sorts of other things as well.  When I signed up for my language course, they presented me with the paperwork and it didn’t occur to me to bargain.  When I got home Mark told me that it was expected.  At the language school?!  Yep.  I could have gotten a better deal if I had asked for one.

Mark has become a champion negotiator after his time in China.  When we go to the fakes market, he is all business.  The key, apparently, is walking away.  This works well when he is alone, but if the kids are with us this is less effective.  They haven’t figured out that they should at least pretend not to care.  When they see something that they like they beg and plead.  This does not help negotiations.  You are supposed to start ridiculously low, but the children find this unfair and will frequently side with the seller and help to drive the price up.  When shopping on their own they will often pull out all their money so that the seller can see exactly how much they have to spend.  These things drive Mark crazy but we have begun to use it to our advantage with a sort of good cop/bad cop routine.  While the kids beg for some horrible plastic toy, Mark will walk away, disgusted.  I shrug and defer to him.  Who am I to cross my domineering husband?  Everyone knows Mark wears the pants.  Well, that’s what they think in the market anyway.  Surprisingly, people will chase after us and give us our final price.  Score!  I know you will all be jealous when you find out how little we paid for all our fancy laser pointers and spinning plastic light up tops.  I have a house full of chopstick sets, off brand Nerf guns, and remote control helicopters all purchased at rock bottom prices.  You should all be very jealous indeed.

Oriental Land!

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A name like that just screams good times, doesn’t it?  When one of Mark’s colleagues suggested a trip to Oriental Land I will admit I was skeptical.  What kind of place lets people call it “oriental land”?  The website promised carnival rides and laser tag, an actual aircraft carrier, and a giant bubble that lets you walk on water.   Hmmm…  so many possibilities.  We started out Sunday morning by heading to Mark’s office.  Chris was spearheading the trip and had generously worked out transportation so that we could all ride together for the hour long trip.  All of Mark’s colleagues came with us—they are only an office of four—and Lilly brought her kids so the van was full.  It was raining, unfortunately, but Oriental Land promised lots of indoor activities.  Rain or no rain we were still going.

Welcome to Oriental Land!

Once inside we rented two of those awesome multi-seater bikes to tool around the park.  The rain had stopped and the day was starting to heat up.  Mark was unlucky and ended up in the bike with all the kids.  This didn’t stop them from racing the bike full of adults, though, and any time we got in the bikes there was mayhem and danger.  At one point Chris was yelling “Make way!  Make way!” in Chinese as we barreled down a hill trying to catch and pass the children.  There was a fair amount of taunting and cheating going on and unsuspecting groups of people along the road kept having to scatter to avoid us.  Mark later commented that in the United States there would have been rules against our bike races in the park.  Thanks, China!  We love how you throw caution to the wind when it comes to bodily harm.

We found the aircraft carrier and the water bubble thing.  The actual bubble wasn’t there, but they had these inflatable tubes instead.  The kids didn’t seem to care that the tubes looked way less exciting than the photos from the website.

We checked out the rides and Henry was devastated to discover that he wasn’t tall enough to ride the giant swings.  The fit abruptly ended when he learned that he was tall enough for many of the other rides—rides that involved shooting.  He shot clowns and penguins and various other defenseless things until we decided to move on.

Henry killed all of these guys.

Probably the highlight of Oriental Land for the kids was laser tag.  Lucas has played laser tag a few times, but my other kids haven’t.  Henry has, of course, been dying to play and was thrilled when we pulled up to the laser tag “training ground” and they said there was no age requirement.  Adults could play on a course with more obstacles, but kids would have to play in a more open area.  Surprisingly this didn’t cause any disappointment and they all gladly suited up to run around and shoot each other.  Mark and Chris bravely agreed to participate while the ladies “supervised”.  Somehow the game became adults against kids and the rule of 3 lives maximum was quickly forgotten as the kids ran to the guy in charge of the equipment and begged for more chances.  They played until they were covered in dirt and completely sweaty.

Chris is forced to surrender!

Along the way I managed to end up in the bike with Mark and the kids.  This made us the blondest, whitest bicycle that Oriental Land had ever seen.  People had been staring the entire time we were at the park, but now they started calling out.  “Hello!” random groups would shout at us as we drove by.  One teenager pointed at us and said, “Cool!” as we passed.  People took photos.  We were one of the best attractions at Oriental Land.  Lilly’s daughter was riding with us and she couldn’t get over the attention we were receiving.  “Who was that?” she would ask when someone called out to us.  She was always surprised that they were complete strangers.  Her mother is Chinese, so she gets less of the staring and pointing.  “I couldn’t live this way!” she eventually blurted out.  She was tired of being part of our rock star celebrity group.

We don’t know this guy.

We ate lunch at a restaurant not far from the park.  It was Chris’ recommendation, and we were able to sit by the water and have some Chinese food.  When we arrived, there was the usual waving, pointing, and staring.  Someone was yelling at us from across the water.  Everyone was convinced that people were saying “Henry”.  No, no, I insisted.  After all, I had just spent a good deal of time explaining about how all those friendly folks were just random people.  Then I looked across the little river and saw the family of one of Henry’s classmates!  We really did know those people!

Shanghai– the world’s largest small town

After buying some fancy lollipops, we all piled back in the van sticky, sweaty, and tired.  The kids had loved the trip even though we really saw only a fraction of what Oriental Land had to offer.  Not sure if we will make it back, but if we ever need a good dose of water sports combined with shooting stuff, now we know where to go.

Welcome to Erickson Pharmacy

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Ever since I went on the hospital tour, I have been doing everything possible to avoid taking anyone to the doctor.  We have been fairly lucky—no emergencies, yet—and the illnesses around here have been minor.  The kids have had colds, of course, and Lucas had an asthma flare up that made me realize that we didn’t bring enough of his medicine.  That problem was solved with a few phone calls home, grandparent involvement, and a fortuitous trip to the US by one of Mark’s colleagues.

Our relative good health was bound to end, though.  It was only a matter of time before we would have to venture out and try one of the pediatricians here in Shanghai.  Our first incident occurred when Lucas came downstairs after his bath and announced that he had chicken pox.  All of the kids have been vaccinated so this would be highly improbable, but the bumps all over his chest did look suspiciously like the pox.  They were spreading, and a quick glance at Google images had me convinced that he might be right.  There had been a recent note from one of the schools about students coming down with chicken pox, so when Henry and Ava also had the red bumps, I panicked and called our pediatrician in Baltimore.  With the time difference, I was lucky enough to be able to reach him during his morning call time and catch him before he left for the office.  How great is that, by the way, that you can call him in the morning to chat before he goes to work?

Dr. Bodnar was extremely patient with me as he explained that there was no way we could have chicken pox.  Highly improbable.  When I pressed for a diagnosis he told me that he couldn’t say without seeing them and, obviously, that wasn’t going to happen.  We would need to see someone here.  Erg.  So off we went in the morning to a new pediatrician.

The office visit was uneventful, really.  The pediatrician was fine and the kids liked her though I missed home and the ease of our old routine.  They were able to fit all three kids in at the same time, for better or worse, and they ruled out chicken pox pretty quickly.  It turned out the kids had hot tub folliculitus.  In other words, we had caught something from bacteria in the clubhouse hot tub.  Gross!  Even worse, we had invited a friend to the pool and she had the same rash.  Who wants a play date with the Ericksons?  Our pool has bacteria!  Come on over!

They gave us some antibiotic cream which we never used since it all cleared up in a matter of days.  Even more exciting, the doctor told me that they keep Lucas’ asthma medicine in stock.  Hooray!  Would we like some?  Of course we would!  Here is where China is vastly different from home.  The pharmacy is located in the doctor’s office.  This is lucky because it is usually in the main part of the hospital and this would have been very hard to navigate without reasonable spoken Mandarin.  The doctor wrote the prescriptions and then they were filled one desk over.  You wait for them to check you out and to pay any fees and then you get your medicine.  Because few things are available over the counter, people will stock up whenever they go to the doctor on things like pain relievers and cold medicine.

Since we were stocking up, I had several boxes to pick up at the pharmacy counter.  Once I got there the pharmacist had a lengthy discussion with me about how to mix the medicine before Lucas used it.  What?  Mix it?  I didn’t understand.  He explained that none of it was mixed so I would need to measure the saline and then the medicine and then put it in the nebulizer.  Ok… I am not at all comfortable with that, but if this is the way things work then I can roll with it.  Apparently, I am the pharmacist’s assistant!  He has an awful lot of faith in me if he is just going to let me mix things at home, but apparently his job is only to hand me the boxes.  The doctor had made it seem so straightforward.  She hadn’t mentioned that I needed to do more than just open the package.

The same thing happened when Henry had to go back to the doctor the next week for a possible ear infection.  An ear infection that I didn’t believe he had because sometimes I am an awesome mother.  Honestly, he had no fever and he was skipping around and jumping in the air and only occasionally complaining that his ear sort of hurt.  So off we went again and once again I stood befuddled at the pharmacy counter.  I had heard that in China they preferred IV antibiotics and that had made me wary of taking the kids in for things like an ear infection.  The pediatrician thought this was funny.  Of course they had oral antibiotics!  We would start with our old friend amoxicillin!  She only had capsules, but that would work out fine!

Cut to the pharmacy again where I stood rereading the directions on the box of antibiotic capsules.  Lucky I had read them at all since I thought I was just going to be giving Henry a capsule or two every so often.  The directions told me to mix the contents of two capsules with 20 ml of water and to give Henry 14 ml twice a day.  What?  20 ml to mix but 14 ml per dose?  Why didn’t the pharmacist just mix the damn stuff for me?  The pediatrician had said we could mix it with juice or something to get him to take the capsules, but the box said I needed to mix it before I even tried to make it edible.  I asked the pharmacist and he blinked at me several times before answering.  Since Henry didn’t weigh enough to just take two full capsules, I needed to open the capsules and mix their contents with liquid and then take out the correct dosage for his weight.  His job really was just to hand me the boxes!  He even handed me a bottle with the label “simple syrup” on it and instructed me that I could use this to make the medicine taste better.  Sure thing, don’t worry about me!  No, no, you just sit there and finish your tea!  I can do all this “pharmacy” stuff when I get home!

So for the past few days I have been attempting to mix a stiff cocktail of antibiotic goodness for Mr. Doodle.  I have begun mixing it with chocolate syrup but I have no idea if the doses I am giving him are right.  I assume they are close enough because he has stopped complaining about his ear.  Just wait until I get a chance to work my magic on Lucas!  Who knew I was such a good pharmacist?